The Forest

Matt had the day off from work for the Christmas holiday (Not Sinter Klaas this time) on Thursday, so we finally took a walk. A walk to the Amsterdam Forest that is.

It is only about a 20-minute walk from our apartment to the Amsterdamse Bos. We walked west through an older section of Amstelveen, and I finally got to see the windmill (now converted into a restaurant) that we can see the back side of from our 10th story window, up close and personal. I hadn't realized how much the blades curve to catch the wind. It's beautiful, and now I really want to go back there for dinner. Apparently, that part of the town used to be considered the heart of Amstelveen, and was much more popular than where we live. There was a train track through that part at the time, and it was before Stadsplein got built up with a mall, theater, museum, and restaurants. But it's got a lot of charm, and feels more European than our modern slice of Amstelveen. We passed home after picturesque home with lovely yards, manicured and inviting, even in the bareness of fall.

As for the forest itself, I didn't really know what to expect, but what we entered fits my definition of a park much better than a forest. Perhaps that's the influence of Mt. Diablo wilderness, or the Smith's (thank you so much) annual Yosemite treks. But the "forest" was beautiful. And quite popular, even on Christmas day. Even with the bathrooms locked up... We witnessed a funny family outing where a 30-something son vaulted away from his wife, and over some downed trees to snap pictures. I thought maybe a family pet was being cute, but it turned out to be his father/father-in-law taking a potty break in a clutch of trees. Shouldn't have gotten his son that nice camera for Christmas...

Compared to the tangled mess of trees I called a forest outside my childhood bedroom window, this wasn't a forest. Forests are places you can get lost in. They carry an edge of danger to them. Not so, the Amsterdam forest. It's almost completely flat, for starters, and the trees are evenly spaced over a lot of the area. Canals and lakes crisscross over manicured greens, swimming with noisy birds, large and small, chased by family dogs, in turn chased by dog walkers. Paths are well worn by joggers, family outings, and romantic, slow ambling couples of all ages oblivious to all else. A well-planned "fitness" path runs down the length of the forest offering visitors the opportunity to jump hurdles, stretch, try chin ups or muscle ups, balance bars and dips. I tried a few.... Matt tried most. Muscle ups are crazy and should only be attempted in the Olympics. But, then again, Matt has superhuman strength. We walked for an hour or more, and found our way out on the north end, in another section of town altogether. It was still early, so we caught a bus home (I didn't wear the right socks, and had started working up a nice blister, so no more walking, please) about a 2-minute walk south.

After changing, and grabbing a warming bowl of soup, we headed back into the city to catch what we could of the light. We went to find ourselves a particular pub that Matt had read about, but neither one of us could recall the name. This particular local is distinguished by having been home to an artist named Max Beckman. The pub rents out the rooms above the restaurant. Beckman was an expressionist painter from Germany who lived here in Amsterdam during somewhat of an exile by the Nazi’s. In 1937, the Nazi’s marked him as a “degenerate” for his work, and he fled to Amsterdam, and 10 years later, moved to the US where he taught as well as worked. He died in New York in 1950. His work puts my mind somewhere between Dali, Hieronymus Bosch, Picasso and Van Gogh... Unsettling stuff. I’d never heard of him before this, but it seems that Amsterdam is full of tragic personal stories like these, where people come to Amsterdam looking for refuge from something. Some find it, most find something else. They become pieces of history mostly forgotten, but etched into the buildings. Of course, being Christmas day, the pub was closed… We ended up having dinner at an extremely touristy place (therefor it was open) in Leidseplein called the Pancake House. They serve these huge plates with a huge flat pancake (somewhere between a crepe, pancake, and burrito tortilla) topped with anything from Thai style chicken to guac, to berries and ice cream. We watched the Lakers v. Celtic game, and the people on either side of us spoke in loud American accents. It almost felt like we weren’t living in a foreign country.

We tried the Beckman pub again on Friday. First we followed a canal route suggested by a AAA guide book that I got in Walnut Creek before we left. It takes you from Central Station through a corner of the Jordaan, and follows a main street, Herengracht, from west to east, ending on the opposite side of town at the Ship Museum where a replica Dutch East India company ship bobs on the water. I snapped so many pictures (seemingly of the same canal scene or row of Dutch houses I’ve snapped so many times before, in hindsight) that we ran out of light about half way round. So we stopped, and made our way back around to Dams Square (the main shopping drag of Amsterdam), got our bearings and found our way to the Tara Pub.

This time we not only knew the name, but had also found the exact address of the artist abode/Irish pub. After circling a few time in an area we’ve walked nearly every time that we go to Amsterdam Central, we finally found the pub. We had been looking on the wrong side of the canal all along. The extra wide canal streets, and the fact that the main city thoroughfares are laid out in circles instead of squares makes for lots of “exploration”, aka: getting lost. Once we found our way in, it was easy to stay. There’s a kind of faux Irish theme pub that Matt and I get a kick out of. They take old Irish myths and recreate them on the walls, and in huge, garish statues, often with badly faked wood work in bright colors. The Tara has landed on purples. They’ve mashed that together with a true traditional pub. It takes up about 4 different properties, not including the hotel suite, and melds them together so you can find whatever atmosphere suites you, from modern black lit bars, to close and cozy fireplace rooms, to a smokers pool hall, or a high ceiling-ed fancy pants restaurant, along side the bar with the Dubliner bartender cheering on the home team. All under one roof.

The Tara seems to be a place that has never wearied of expanding over the years, where most Dutch places are content to eek out a few hundred years in a closet and call it a café. I love and hate the stairs in Dutch cafes…like the ones in this picture. They seem like such a death trap. But everyone is used to them. An these are typical in places where people drink alcohol. Yet, somehow, accidents are infrequent. We ducked into this place, which I don’t even know the name of, mostly so I could use the bathroom when we were trying to find the Tara on Thursday. We stayed for a pint and listened to the bartender tell the history of some of the jazz décor to another few patrons in Dutch. We almost knew what he was talking about. It always confuses people when we do that, and then turn around and ask for the tab in English. Someday, we'll learn Dutch. Hopefully the conversations will still be as interesting :)